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Greyhawk, also known as the
World of Greyhawk, is a fictional world
designed as a campaign setting for
the Dungeons &
Dragonsfantasyroleplaying game . Although not the first
campaign world developed for Dungeons &
Dragons—Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign predates it by a few months—the
world of Greyhawk was the setting most closely identified with the
development of the game from 1972 until 2008. The world itself
started as a simple dungeon under a castle designed by Gary Gygax for the amusement of his children and
friends, but it rapidly expanded to include not only a complex
multi-layered dungeon environment, but also the nearby city of
Greyhawk, and eventually, an entire world. In addition to the
campaign world, which was published in several editions over twenty
years, Greyhawk was also used as the setting for many adventures
published in support of the game, as well as for RPGA's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign from
2000–2008.

Early development

In the late 1960s, Gary Gygax, a military
history buff and fan of pulp fantasy in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin,
started to add elements of fantasy into traditional tabletop
medieval miniatures wargames, sometimes
replacing typical medieval weapons with magical spells, or using
dragons and other fantastical monsters in place of soldiers. In
1971, as part of a rule set for tabletop battles called
Chainmail that he was
co-writing, he created supplementary rules for magical spells and
monsters as well as one-to-one combat.

Around the same time in Minneapolis–St. Paul, another tabletop
wargamer, Dave Arneson, was also
developing a new type of game. Arneson had been impressed by the
Napoleonic tabletop "Braunstein" campaigns of fellow wargamer
David Wesely that incorporated elements
of what would now be called role-playing, including using a neutral
referee or judge, and conversations between the players and
imaginary characters to resolve diplomatic issues. However, Arneson
soon grew tired of the Napoleonic setting, and one night when the
gaming group assembled, he presented a plastic model of a castle in
place of the usual battlefield, and told the players that instead
of controlling regiments that night, they would each take one
individual character into the castle of the Barony of Blackmoor to
explore its dangerous dungeons. For combat resolution, he started
by using rock-paper-scissors,
but quickly moved to a combination of rules that combined
Chainmail and a nautical wargame he had co-written with
Gary Gygax and Mike Carr called Don't Give Up the Ship. What set
Arneson's game apart from Wesely's tabletop wargaming was that the
players could keep the same characters from session to session, and
that the characters "advanced" by developing better abilities or
powers over time.

Arneson's Minneapolis-St. Paul Napoleonic gaming group was in touch
with Gygax's Lake Geneva group, and Arneson mentioned his dungeons
of Blackmoor that the group was playing on alternate weekends.
Gygax was interested, so during a visit to Lake Geneva in 1972,
Arneson demonstrated his Blackmoor dungeons to Gygax. Gygax was
immediately intrigued by the concept of individual characters
exploring a dungeon setting, and believed that this was a game that
could be marketed and sold. He and Arneson agreed to co-develop a
set of rules based on Chainmail. In order to provide a
playtest environment in which to develop these rules, Gygax
designed his own castle, "Castle Greyhawk", and prepared the first
level of a dungeon that lay beneath it. Two of his children, Ernie
and Elise, were the first players, and during their first session,
they fought and destroyed the first monsters of the Greyhawk
dungeon; Gygax variously recalled this as being some giant
centipedes or a nest of scorpions. During the same session, Ernie
and Elise also found the first treasure, a chest of 3,000 copper
coins (which was too heavy to carry, much to the children's
disgust). After his children had gone to bed, Gygax immediately
began to work on the second level of the dungeon. At the next play
session, Ernie and Elise were joined by Gygax's friends Don Kaye and Rob and Terry
Kuntz.

About a month after his first session, Gygax created the nearby
city of Greyhawk, where the players' characters could sell their
treasure and find a place to rest.

1972–1979: Home campaign

As Gygax and Arneson worked to develop and publish the rules for
Dungeons and Dragons through TSR, Gygax
continued to design and present the dungeons and environs of Castle
Greyhawk to his circle of friends and family, using them as
playtesters for new rules and concepts. As the players began to
explore more of the world outside of the castle and city, Gygax
developed other regions and cities for them to explore. With play
sessions happening seven days a week, and sometimes twice a day,
Gygax didn't have the time or inclination to create the map for a
whole new world; he simply drew his "world" over a map of North
America, adding new cities and regions as his world slowly grew
through on-going adventures. The city and castle of Greyhawk he
placed near the real-world position of Chicago, his birthplace;
various other places were clustered around it. For instance, the
rival city of Dyvers he placed in the area of
real-world Minneapolis.

He also continued to develop the dungeons underneath the castle,
and by the time he was finished, the complex labyrinth encompassed
13 levels filled with devious traps, secret passageways, hungry
monsters and glittering treasure. For anyone who made it to the
bottom level alive, the insane architect of the dungeons, Zagyg,
awaited them. ("Zagyg" is a reverse homophone of "Gygax", and was
Gygax's inside joke that the person who designed this crazy,
purposeless place—himself—must be insane.) Only three players ever
made it to the bottom level and met Zagyg, all of them during solo
adventures: Rob Kuntz (playing Robilar),
Gygax's son Ernie (playing Tenser), and Rob's
brother Terry (playing Terik).
Their reward was to be instantly transported to the far side of the
world, where they each faced a long solo trek back to the city of
Greyhawk. (However, Terik and Tenser managed to catch up to Robilar
along the way, and they made it back to Greyhawk together.)

By this time, over twenty players crowded Gygax's basement almost
every night, and the effort needed to plan their adventures took up
much of Gygax's spare time. He had been very impressed with Rob
Kuntz's imaginative play as a player, and appointed Rob to be
co-Dungeon Master of Greyhawk. This
freed up Gygax to work on other projects, and also gave him an
opportunity to participate as a player, creating characters like
Yrag and Mordenkainen.

In order to "make room" for Rob's dungeons, Gygax scrapped his
bottom level and integrated Rob's work into the Greyhawk dungeons.
Gygax and Kuntz continued to develop new levels for their players,
and by the time the Greyhawk home campaign drew to a close in 1985,
the castle dungeons encompassed more than fifty levels.

Significant player characters of the home campaign

While many players participating in the Gygax/Kuntz home campaign
were occasional players, sometimes not even giving their characters
a name, others played far more frequently, and several of their
characters became well-known to the general gaming world well
before publication of the Greyhawk campaign setting. Some of these
characters became known when Gygax mentioned them in his various
columns, interviews and publications. In other cases, when Gygax
created a new magical spell for the game, he would sometimes
"borrow" the name of a wizard character from his home campaign to
add verisimilitude to the spell name (for example, Tenser's
floating disc, Tenser being a character created by his son
Ernie). Some of the characters who became synonymous with Greyhawk
at that time included:

Murlynd: Gary Gygax's friend Don Kaye created Murlynd for the second-ever
session of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign in 1972. Gygax later recalled
that "Murlynd" was the first attempt by a player to make a creative
name for a character; in the early days, most players—including
Gygax himself—simply used their own name as a basis for their
character's name. (Tenser = Ernest, Yrag = Gary, etc.)
Cross-pollination with other fictional "universes" was common in
the early days , and in one of these sessions, Murlynd was
transported to America's Wild West, a
setting that Kaye loved. When Murlynd eventually returned to the
world of Greyhawk, he brought his six-shooters back with him. Although Gygax did
not allow the use of gunpowder in his Greyhawk setting, he made a
loophole for Don Kaye by ruling that Murlynd actually carried two
"magical wands" that made loud noises and delivered small but
deadly missiles.

Robilar: Robilar was a fighter belonging to
Rob Kuntz. Like Murlynd, Robilar was also created for the
second-ever session beneath Castle Greyhawk in 1972, rolled up on
Gygax's kitchen table. Gygax suggested to Kuntz the name of
Robilar, after a minor character in Gygax's novella The Gnome
Cache. Because Kuntz was a constant player, Robilar rapidly
gained power and possessions. As the city of Greyhawk was
developed, he also became the secret owner of the Green Dragon Inn
in the city of Greyhawk, where he kept tabs on happenings in the
city. Kuntz quickly grew impatient with play when it involved more
than a couple of players, and often played solo adventures
one-on-one with Gygax. Robilar was not only the first to reach the
13th and bottom level of Gygax's Greyhawk dungeons, but on the way,
he was also responsible for freeing nine demi-gods (whom Gygax
revived a decade later as some of the first deities of Greyhawk:
Iuz, Ralishaz, Trithereon, Erythnul,
Olidammara, Heironeous, Celestian,
Hextor, and Obad-Hai). Robilar was also the first to enter
Gygax's Temple of Elemental
Evil, and trashed it from top to bottom, even freeing the
demoness Zuggtmoy from her prison at the
centre of the Temple. Kuntz later related that Gygax was very
dismayed that his masterpiece dungeon had been destroyed by a
single adventurer, and as punishment, Gygax had an army pursue
Robilar all the way back to his castle, which Robilar was forced to
abandon. Robilar even lost possession of the Green Dragon Inn.

Tenser: Tenser was a wizard played by Gygax's
son Ernie. In the earliest days of Greyhawk, Ernie often gamed with
Rob Kuntz (Robilar) and Terry Kuntz (Terik). At one point, using
their combined forces of loyal henchmen, the three controlled
access to the first level of the Greyhawk dungeons while they
ransacked the lower levels. Eventually Tenser became the second
character to reach the 13th (and at the time, the bottom level) of
the Greyhawk dungeons, when he noticed that Robilar was missing and
went in search of him. Gary Gygax "borrowed" Tenser's name for two
spells, Tenser's floating disc and Tenser's
transformation.

Terik: Terik (or Teric) was a character
created by Terry Kuntz (brother of Rob Kuntz). Terik often
adventured with Tenser and Robilar in the days when the three
controlled the first level of the dungeons of Greyhawk. Terik
became the third and last character to reach the bottom level of
Gygax's original Greyhawk dungeon when he noticed Robilar and
Tenser were missing and went in search of them.

Erac's Cousin: Gary Gygax's son Ernie
originally had a character he called "Erac". Later, he created a
wizard who, due to a personal issue as part of his backstory, refused to reveal his name, simply
referring to himself as "Erac's Cousin". Gary Gygax knew that Ernie
liked the Barsoom stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and at one point,
whisked Erac's Cousin off to a very Barsoom-like Mars, where the
inhabitants refused to let the wizard use magic. Erac's Cousin was
forced to become a fighter instead, and learned to fight
proficiently with two weapons simultaneously. Eventually he was
able to teleport back to Oerth, but when he acquired two vorpal blades, Rob Kuntz and Gary Gygax decided he
had become too powerful, and lured him into a demon's clutches. The
demon took him to an alternative plane that drained the magic from
the vorpal blades, destroying them.

Yrag: After Gygax made Kuntz a co-DM, this
fighter was Gygax's first character, and Gygax often referred to
Yrag's various adventures in columns and interviews. ("Yrag" is
simply "Gary" spelled backwards.)

Mordenkainen: This was perhaps Gygax's most
famous character, and also his favourite. Mordenkainen started as a
lowly 1st-level wizard in 1973, his name drawn from Finnish
mythology. Due to constant play, often with Rob Kuntz as DM, Gygax
advanced Mordenkainen into a powerful character. (In later years,
Gygax would not reveal exactly how powerful Mordenkainen had
become, only ever admitting that the wizard had "twenty-something
levels".) Even years after he last played Mordenkainen, he would
not disclose any of Mordenkainen's powers or possessions.

Bigby: Bigby started life as an evil low-level
wizard non-player character in Rob Kuntz's dungeons of Greyhawk.
Gary Gygax, playing Mordenkainen, managed to subdue him, and forced
Bigby to become his servant. After a long time and several
adventures, Mordenkainen managed to convince Bigby to leave his
evil ways behind, and Kuntz ruled that Bigby had changed from an
enemy to a loyal henchmen, and therefore Gygax could take over
Bigby as a player character. Thereafter, Gygax developed Bigby into
a powerful wizard second only to Mordenkainen, and used his name to
describe a series of "hand" spells (Bigby's crushing hand,
Bigby's grasping hand, etc.). For a time after this, Rob
Kuntz ruled that all the names of Mordenkainen's future henchmen
had to rhyme with Bigby. This resulted in Zigby the dwarf; Rigby
the cleric; Sigby Griggbyson the fighter; Bigby's apprentice,
Nigby; and Digby, Mordenkainen's new apprentice who replaced
Bigby.

Melf: Melf was an elven character created by
Gary Gygax's son Luke. After Luke had rolled up his elf's abilities
and filled out the rest of his character sheet, he couldn't think
of a name for his new character, and simply went with what was
written across the top of the character sheet: M Elf (that is, male
elf). Gary Gygax borrowed Melf's name for the spell Melf's acid
arrow.

Rary: Rary was a low-level wizard created by
Brian Blume and played only until he
reached 3rd-level, at which point Blume retired him, having reached
his objective, which was to be able to call his character "Medium
Rary". Gygax borrowed the name for the spells Rary's mnemonic
enhancer and Rary's telepathic bond. Ironically, the
original Rary was never powerful enough to cast either of "his"
spells.

Otto: Otto, like Bigby, started life as an
evil non-player character wizard in the dungeons of Greyhawk.
Tenser and Robilar defeated him in combat, and when given a choice
of which master to serve, Otto chose to serve Robilar (thereby
becoming a character "owned" by Robilar's creator, Rob Kuntz.)
Thereafter, Otto accompanied Robilar on many adventures, including
Robilar's destruction of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Gary Gygaz
borrowed Otto's name for the spell Otto's irresistible
dance.

Drawmij: Drawmij was a
wizard created by Jim Ward—"Drawmij" is
simply his name spelled backwards. Gygax borrowed Drawmij's name
for the magical spell Drawmij's instant summons.

The Circle of Eight: At the point where
Gygax's own characters in the Greyhawk home campaign had
collectively accumulated both enough wealth that they couldn't
easily spend it, and a standing army that rivalled most nations'
forces, he gathered all eight of the characters
together—Mordenkainen (wizard), Yrag (fighter), Bigby (wizard),
Rigby (cleric), Zigby (dwarf), Felnorith (elf), Vram (elf) &
Vin (elf)—as the Circle of Eight. Pooling their resources, Gygax
had the Eight construct a stronghold in the middle of an evil land
so they would not have to travel far to find adventure. After three
years of game time, the result was the Obsidian Citadel, a massive
and impregnable octagonal castle from which any of the Eight could
sally forth in search of adventure.

Greyhawk "firsts"

The first deities of Greyhawk

One facet of culture that Gygax did not address during the first
few years of his home campaign was organized religion. Since his
campaign was largely built around the needs of lower-level
characters, he didn't think specific deities were necessary, since
direct interaction between a god and a low-level character was very
unlikely. Some of his players took matters into their own hands,
calling upon Norse or Greek gods such as Odin
or Zeus, or even Conan'sCrom in times of dire need. However,
some of the players wanted Gygax to create and customize a specific
deity so that cleric characters could receive their powers from
someone less ambiguous than "the gods". Gygax, with tongue in
cheek, created two gods: Saint Cuthbert—who
brought non-believers around to his point of view with whacks of
his cudgel —and Pholtus, whose fanatical
followers refused to believe that any other gods existed. Because
both of these deities represented aspects of Good, Gygax eventually
created a few evil deities to provide some villainy.

The first glimpse of Oerth

In the first issue of The
Dragon published in June 1976, Gygax prefaced Chapter 1 of
his serialized novella The Gnome Cache with a note that
the story's setting, Oerth, was very similar to Earth in terms of
geography.

In Chapter 2, which appeared in the next issue of The
Dragon, a shrine to St. Cuthbert (spelled "St. Cuthburt") was
mentioned, the first published reference to a Greyhawk deity.

The first Greyhawk novel

In 1976, Gygax invited the science fiction/fantasy writer Andre Norton to play Dungeons & Dragons in
his Greyhawk world. Norton subsequently wrote Quag Keep,
which involved a group of gamers who travel from the "real" world
to Greyhawk. It was the first novel to be set, at least
partially, in the Greyhawk setting, and according to
Alternative Worlds, the first to be based on
D&D. Quag Keep was excerpted in Issue 12 of
The Dragon (February 1978) just prior to the book's
release. (In 2006, after Norton's death, her partially completed
manuscript of a sequel, Return to Quag Keep, was finished
by Jean Rabe and subsequently
published.)

The first Greyhawk adventures published by TSR

Between 1976–1979, Gygax also shared some glimpses of his home
campaign with other gamers when he set several TSR D&D
adventures in the world of Greyhawk:

1980: The World of Greyhawk folio edition

In 1975, Gygax and Kuntz published a booklet called Supplement I: Greyhawk, an
expansion of the rules for Dungeons and Dragons based on their play
experiences in the Greyhawk campaign. Although it detailed new
spells and character classes that had been developed in the
dungeons of Greyhawk, it did not contain any details of their
Greyhawk campaign world. The only two references to Greyhawk were
an illustration of a large stone head in a dungeon corridor titled
The Great Stone Face, Enigma of Greyhawk, and mention of a
fountain on the second second level of the dungeons that
continuously issued endless numbers of snakes.

The 2004 publication 30
Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons &
Dragons suggested that details of Gygax's Greyhawk
campaign were published in this booklet, but in fact, Gygax had no
plans in 1975 to publish details of the Greyhawk world, since he
believed that new players of Dungeons and Dragons would rather
create their own worlds than use someone else's. In addition, he
didn't want to publish all the material he had created for his
players; he thought he would be unlikely to recoup a fair
investment for the thousands of hours he had spent on it; and since
his secrets would be revealed to his players, he would be forced to
recreate a new world for them afterwards.

However, with the release of the AD&D Players Handbook
in 1978, many players were intrigued by the connection of Greyhawk
characters to magical spells such as Tenser's floating
disc, Bigby's crushing hand, and Mordenkainen's
disjunction. The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide,
released the following year, also made references to the dungeons
of Greyhawk. Players' curiosity was further whetted by the ten
D&D modules set in Greyhawk that were published between
1976–1979. Several of Gygax's regular columns in Dragon
magazine also mentioned details of his home campaign or some of the
characters that inhabited his world.

Gygax was surprised when it became apparent that players wanted to
use Greyhawk as their campaign world.

Development of geography

In response to this, Gygax changed his mind and decided he would
publish his private campaign world, but with some important
changes. Rather than using his own map, which was simply the
real-world Earth overwritten with his cities, towns and regions, he
decided to create a new world called Oerth. (Gygax sometimes joked,
"Say it as Oi-th as if you were from Brooklyn, and that's
the way I pronounce it. That annoys all who take a fantasy world
far too seriously.") Once he had sketched out the entire planet to
his satisfaction, he decided to concentrate his first efforts on
one small corner of the world. One hemisphere of Oerth was
dominated by a massive continent called Oerik. Gygax asked TSR's
printing house about the maximum size of paper they could handle;
the answer was 34" x 22" (86 cm x 56 cm). He found that,
using the scale he desired, he could only fit the northeast corner
of the continent of Oerik on two of the sheets. In order to give
this campaign setting as much flexibility as possible in terms of
geographic settings, his map included arctic wastes, desert,
temperate forests, tropical jungles, mountainous cordillera, seas
and oceans, mighty rivers, archipelagos and volcanoes. He placed
the city and castle of Greyhawk roughly in the centre of the map,
in an area that would have about the same temperate climate as his
home in Lake Geneva. For the other regions that had surrounded the
city of Greyhawk on his old map, some were left relatively close to
the city of Greyhawk; for instance, the rivalry between the cities
of Dyvers, Hardby and Greyhawk was a feature of Gygax's campaign,
so the three cities were placed in close proximity to each other.
However, most other regions were moved further away, scattered
across the new map. Gygax also added many more new regions,
countries and cities, bringing the number of political states to
60:

Needing original placenames for all of the geographical and
political places on his map, Gygax sometimes resorted to wordplay
based on the names of friends and acquaintances. For instance,
Perrenland was named after Jeff Perren, who co-wrote the rules for
Chainmail with Gygax; Urnst was a homophone of Ernst (his
son Ernie); and Sunndi was a near-homophone of Cindy, another of
Gygax's children.

From Gygax's prototype map, Darlene Pekul, a freelance artist in
Lake Geneva, developed a full colour map on a hex grid. Gygax was
so pleased with the end result that he quickly switched his home
Greyhawk campaign over to the new world he had created.

Development of history and politics

Heroes are not needed in peaceful times. As J.R.R.Tolkien
wrote of Bilbo Baggins' harmonious
Shire and its lack of warriors, "Swords in these parts are mostly
blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or
dish-covers..." Knowing that his new world would need conflict,
Gygax set out to create a fractious place where chaos and evil were
in the ascendant and courageous champions would be needed. In order
to explain how his world had arrived at this state, he wrote an
outline of a thousand years of history. As a military history buff,
he was very familiar with the concept of waves of cultural
invasions; for example, the Picts of Great Britain invaded by
Celts, who in turn were invaded by Romans. In creating a similar
pattern of history for his world, Gygax decided that a thousand
years before his campaign began, this corner of the continent had
been occupied by a peaceful but primitive people called the
Flannae; hence the name of this part of Oerik, "the Flanaess". At
that time, far to the west of the Flanaess, two peoples were at
war, the Bakluni and the Suolise. The war reached its climax when
both sides invoked mighty magic to obliterate each other, an event
called the "Twin Cataclysms". Refugees of these disasters were
forced out of their lands, and the Suolise invaded the Flanaess,
forcing the Flannae to flee to the outer edges of the continent.
Several centuries later, a new invader appeared, the Oeridians, and
they in turn forced the Suolise southward. One tribe of the
Oeridians, the Aerdi, began to set up an empire. Several centuries
later, the Aerdi's "Great Kingdom" ruled most of the Flanaess. The
Aerdi overkings marked the beginning of what they believed would be
perpetual peace with Year 1 of a new calendar, the Common Year Reckoning. However,
several centuries later, the Empire began to rot with decadence.
The overkings fell prey to madness, black magic and evil, and began
to treat their subjects like slaves. When the most evil overking of
all, Ivid V, came to the throne, the oppressed peoples rose up in
righteous rebellion, and the overking responded with an iron
fist.

It was this point, in the year 576 CY, with the once-bright Great
Kingdom now an evil crumbling tyranny, and small brave countries
and cities rebelling against it, that Gygax set the world of
Greyhawk. As Gygax wrote in his World of Greyhawk folio,
"The current state of affairs in the Flanaess is confused indeed.
Humankind is fragmented into isolationist realms, indifferent
nations, evil lands, and states striving for good." Gygax did not
issue monthly or yearly "updates" to the state of affairs as
presented in the folio since he saw 576CY as a common starting
point for every home campaign; because each would be moving forward
at its own pace, there would be no practical way to issue updates
that would be relevant to every Dungeon Master.

Gygax was also aware that different players would be using his
world for different reasons. When he was the Dungeon Master of his
home camapaign, he found that his players were more interested in
dungeon-delving than politics; but when he switched roles and
became a player, often going one-on-one with Rob Kuntz as Dungeon
Master, Gygax immersed his own characters in politics and
large-scale battles of conquest. Knowing that there would be
players simply looking for a town in which to base their campaign,
and others who would be seeking to meddle in politics or command
armies in battle, Gygax tried to include as much detail as possible
about each region, including a short description of the region and
its people, the title of its ruler, the racial makeup of its
people, its resources and major cities, and its allies and
enemies.

For the same reason that he had created a variety of geographical,
political and racial settings, he also strove to create a world
with some good, some evil, and some "undecided" areas. He felt that
some players would be happiest playing in a mainly good country and
fighting the evil that arose to threaten it; others might want to
be a part of an evil country; and still others might take a neutral
stance and simply try to collect gold and treasure from both
sides.

Publication

TSR intended to publish "World of Greyhawk" early in 1979; the
foreword by editor Allen Hammack was dated February 1979. However,
Gygax's The World of Greyhawk (TSR 9025) did not hit store
shelves until August 1980.

The World of Greyhawk consisted of a 32-page folio (this
edition is often called the "World of Greyhawk folio" to
distinguish it from later editions) and a 34" x 44" (86 cm x
112 cm) two-piece colour map of the Flanaess. (For folio
contents, see World of Greyhawk Fantasy
Game Setting.)

Reviewers were generally impressed, but some remarked on the lack
of a pantheon of Greyhawk-specific deities, as well as the lack of
any mention of the infamous dungeons of Castle Greyhawk.

1980–1983: Between editions

Even before the folio edition was available for sale, Gygax made
plans to publish supplementary information, using his column "From
the Sorcerer's Scroll" that appeared on a semi-regular basis in
TSR's Dragon
Magazine.

In the May 1980 issue, Gygax gave a quick overview of the
development of his new The World of Greyhawk folio,
believing that it would be on store shelves before his column
appeared. (However, it would actually be another three months until
the folio was finally published.) For players who planned to use
large scale army tactics, he gave details of the private armies
that were commanded by some prominent Greyhawk characters (all of
them originally created by players in his home campaign): Bigby (created by Gygax himself), Mordenkainen (also created by Gygax), Robilar (Rob Kuntz), Tenser
(Gygax's son Ernie) and Erac's Cousin
(also Ernie Gygax). And Gygax also mentioned some of the planned
Greyhawk publications he was overseeing: a large-scale map of the
City of Greyhawk; some adventure modules set in Greyhawk; a
supplementary map of lands outside the Flanaess; all 50 levels of
Castle Greyhawk's dungeon; and miniatures army combat rules. (None
of these projects other than a few of the adventure modules were
ever published by TSR.)

Although Gygax originally intended to immediately publish more
details of Greyhawk in Dragon on a regular basis, other
projects intervened, and it wasn't until the August 1981 issue of
Dragon that Len Lakofka, in his column
"Leomund's Tiny Hut", outlined methods for determining a
character's place of birth and languages spoken. Gygax added an
addendum concerning the physical appearances of the main Greyhawk
races. In the November 1981 issue, Gygax gave further details of
racial characteristics and modes of dress.

In the December 1981 issue, David Axler contributed a system for
determining weather in the world of Greyhawk. (Gygax later confided
that he thought the system of 14 charts needed to determine the
weather was too cumbersome, and he personally didn't use it in his
home campaign.)

More information about every political region

The folio edition only had 32 pages, and information about each
region was necessarily condensed into a short paragraph or two.
Gygax realized that some players needed more in-depth information
about the motivations and aspirations of each region, and the
history of interactions with surrounding regions. With this in
mind, Gygax decided to publish a much longer description of each
region in Dragon. The first two articles, covering
seventeen regions, appeared in the December 1981 and January 1982
issues. (Issues 56 & 57). However, due to his involvement in
many other TSR projects, Gygax handed responsibility for completion
of this project to Rob Kuntz, who covered the remaining 43 regions
in the March 1982, July 1982 and September 1982 issues. (Issues 59,
63 and 65)

Deities of Greyhawk

In the August 1982 issue (Issue 64), Gygax gave advice on how to
adapt deities from the previously published Deities and Demigods for worship
by non-human races in the Greyhawk world. A few months later, he
published a long and very detailed five-part article in the
November 1982 to March 1983 issues (Issues 67-71) that outlined a
pantheon of deities custom-made for humans in the world of
Greyhawk. In addition to his original Greyhawk deities, St.
Cuthbert and Pholtus, Gygax added 17 more deities:

Although later versions of the campaign setting would assign most
of these deities to worship by specific races of humans, at this
time they were generally worshipped by all humans of the Flanaess.
(For a complete examination of the development of the deities
of Greyhawk, see Greyhawk
deities.)

Non-player characters of Greyhawk

Also included in the March 1983 issue (Issue 71) was an article
detailing four unique characters of Greyhawk. The first two
"quasi-deities"—Heward and Keoghtom—had been created by Gygax as non-player
characters (NPCs—characters designed to interact with players). The
third, Murlynd, was a character that had
been created by Gygax's childhood friend Don
Kaye before Kaye's untimely death in 1975. The fourth, a
"hero-deity" named Kelanen, was developed to
illustrate the "principle of advancement of power".

TSR Greyhawk adventures published after the folio edition

Of the ten adventures set in Greyhawk published by TSR before the
folio edition, all but one had been written by Gygax. However, the
new availability of information about Gygax's campaign world and
TSR's desire to make it central to D&D encouraged many new
writers to set their adventures in Greyhawk. This, combined with
the fact that Gygax was increasingly involved in other areas of the
company, meant that of the seventeen Greyhawk adventures published
in the two years after the folio edition, only four were written or
co-written by Gygax.

First published deities of Greyhawk

Shortly after the release of the folio edition, TSR released the
adventure module C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan,
designed to familiarize players with the Olman
race of the Amedio Jungle. Largely
based on Aztec and Incan
cultures, this adventure introduced the first published deities of
the Greyhawk campaign: Mictlantecuhtli, god of death, darkness,
murder and the underworld; Tezcatlipoca, god of sun, moon, night,
scheming, betrayals and lightning; and Quetzalcoatl, god of air, birds and snakes.
However, this area of the Flanaess was not explored further in any
subsequent TSR adventures or source material, and these three gods
would be "orphaned" through disuse for almost twenty years.

1983: World of Greyhawk boxed set

In 1983, TSR published an expanded boxed set of the campaign world,
World of Greyhawk (usually called the "Greyhawk boxed set"
to differentiate it from other editions). This edition increased
the total number of pages of information fourfold, from 32 pages in
the folio edition to 128 pages, and the amount of details was
commensurately greater. One major addition was a pantheon of
deities: in addition to the nineteen deities outlined by Gygax in
his Dragon article, another 31 new deities were added
(although only three received full write-ups of their abilities and
worshippers). This brought the number of Greyhawk deities to an
even fifty.

For the next eight years, Greyhawk would be primarily defined by
the information in this publication.

1984-1985: Following publication of the boxed set

Publication of the World of Greyhawk was only the first
step in Gygax's vision for Oerth. Over the next few years, he
planned to unveil other areas of the continent of Oerik, one piece
at a time, giving each new area the same in-depth treatment of
history, geography and politics as had been accorded the Flanaess.
And even after Oerik had been thoroughly explored, there was always
the far side of Oerth: another complete hemisphere that Gygax had
mapped out in his personal notes. Part of this would be Gygax's
work, but since he had an entire planet to work with, he envisioned
other authors' work being incorporated into this. Len Lakofka and
Francois Froideval had already created material that Gygax wanted
to place on Oerth. Frank Mentzer,
Creative Consultant at TSR at the time, wrote four RPGA tournament adventures taken from his home campaign
setting of "Acquaria" (published by TSR as the first four of the
R-series modules: R1 To the Aid of Falx, R2
Investigation of Hydell, R3 Egg of the Phoenix,
and R4 Doc's Island); Mentzer envisioned them as the first
part of a new "Aqua-Oeridian" campaign set somewhere on Oerth
outside of the Flanaess.

However, by this time, Gygax was in Hollywood on a semi-permanent
basis, approving scripts for the Saturday morning D&D cartoon series and trying to land a
deal for a D&D movie. Not only was Gygax's own output of
Greyhawk-related materials greatly reduced, but without his
day-to-day presence at TSR headquarters, the company's focus and
resources were about to shift away from Greyhawk to a new campaign
setting called Dragonlance.

One of the factors that contributed to the success of the
Dragonlance setting when it was published in 1984 was a series of
concurrent novels by Tracy Hickman and
Margaret Weis.Gygax realized that
novels set in Greyhawk could have a similar benefit for his
campaign world and wrote Saga of Old City, the first in a
series of novels that would be published under the banner
Greyhawk Adventures. The protagonist was Gord the Rogue, and this first novel told of
his rise from the Slum Quarters of the city of Greyhawk to become
world traveller and thief extraordinaire. The novel was designed to
promote sales of the boxed set by providing colourful details about
the social customs and peoples of various cities and countries
around the Flanaess.

Even before Saga of Old City rolled off the presses in
November 1985, Gygax wrote a sequel, Artifact of Evil. He
also wrote a short story, At Moonset Blackcat Comes, that
appeared in the special 100th issue of Dragon in August
1985. This introduced Gord the Rogue to gamers just before Saga
of Old City was scheduled to be released.

Greyhawk modules

As further proof that TSR's focus had shifted away from Greyhawk,
in the two years after the boxed set appeared, TSR only published 8
adventures set in Greyhawk, five of them written or co-written by
Gygax, and the other three from TSR's United Kingdom division:

Dragon articles

Between 1983–1985, the only notable supplement for the Greyhawk
world was a five-part article by Len Lakofka in Issues 86–90 &
92 of Dragon (June–October 1984 & December 1984) that
detailed the Suel gods who had been briefly mentioned in the boxed
set.

In Issue 92 (December 1984), Gygax mentioned clerics of non-human
races and indicated that the 24 demihuman and humanoid deities that
had been published in Issues 58–62 of Dragon
(February–June 1982) were now "Greyhawk legal"; this increased the
number of Greyhawk deities from 50 to 74.

Other than those articles, Greyhawk was only mentioned in passing
in three other issues until Gygax's "Gord the Rogue" short story in
Issue 100 of Dragon (August 1985). Gygax then provided
some errata for the boxed set in Issue 101 (September 1985).
However, this would be the last mention of Greyhawk in
Dragon for almost two years.

Gygax departs

Shortly after the release of the boxed set, Gygax discovered that
while he had been in Hollywood, TSR had run into serious financial
difficulties. Returning to Lake Geneva, Gygax managed to get TSR
back on firm financial footing. However, different visions of TSR's
future caused a power struggle within the company, and Gygax was
forced out of TSR on December 31, 1985.

By the terms of his settlement with TSR, Gygax kept the rights to
Gord the Rogue as well as all D&D characters whose names were
anagrams or plays on his own name (for example, Yrag and Zagyg).
However, he lost the rights to all his other work, including the
world of Greyhawk and the names of all the characters he had ever
used in TSR material. Mordenkainen, Robilar, Tenser and Melf—to
name a few—no longer belonged to Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz, Ernie Gygax
and Luke Gygax; their fictional lives were now controlled by
TSR.

1986–1987: Greyhawk without Gygax

Up until this time, Gygax had been the creator of Oerth and the
arbiter of all things Greyhawk. Now the world of Greyhawk belonged
to TSR, and its continued development would become the work of many
writers and creative minds. Rather than Gygax's vision of an entire
planet of new lands and adventures, the setting would never be
expanded beyond the Flanaess, nor would other authors' work be
linked to unexplored areas of Oerik. In time, TSR's stewardship
would produce a new storyline, and Greyhawk would become a very
different place than Gygax had envisioned.

Greyhawk novels continue without Gord the Rogue

Gygax's novel Saga of Old City, released in November 1985,
and Artifact of Evil, which ironically appeared two months
after Gygax's departure from TSR, proved to be popular titles, and
in 1987, TSR hired Rose Estes to continue
the series, albeit without Gord the Rogue, to whom Gygax had
retained all rights. Between 1987 and 1989, Estes produced five
more novels under the Greyhawk Adventures banner:
Master Wolf, The Price of Power, The Demon
Hand, The Name of the Game, and The Eyes Have
It. A sixth book, Dragon in Amber, appeared in 1990
book catalogues, but the book was never written, and the series was
discontinued.

The dungeons of Greyhawk revealed

In its 1986 Summer Mail Order Hobby Shop catalogue, TSR had listed
a new Greyhawk adventure called WG7 Shadowlords, a
high-level adventure to be written by Gary Gygax and Skip Williams. However, this adventure was
cancelled after Gygax left TSR, and the catalogue number WG7 was
reassigned to a new adventure, Castle Greyhawk, released
in 1988. It was the first new Greyhawk adventure in three years,
but players buying the adventure hoping to be finally ushered into
Gygax's famous dungeons discovered it had nothing to do with
Gygax's original Castle Greyhawk. Instead, it was a compilation of
12 humorous dungeons levels, each one written by a freelance
author. The puns and jokes often referenced modern culture—the Amazing Driderman, King
Burger, Bugsbear Bunny, and the crew
of Star Trek—while
the appearance of Mordenkainen in a movie studio seemed to mock
Gygax and his time spent in Hollywood trying to land a movie deal
for TSR.

1988–1990: Greyhawk revived

By 1988, with the first series of Dragonlance adventures drawing to
a close and Forgotten Realms doing very well, TSR turned back to
Greyhawk. In Issue 129 of Dragon (January 1988), Jim
Ward—one of the original players in the dungeons of Greyhawk,
creator of the wizard Drawmij, and now working for TSR in the
post-Gygax era—requested player input about what should be included
in a hardcover source book for Greyhawk.He received over 500
letters in response. Seven months later, in Issue 135 (August
1988), he outlined the ideas from readers that been included, and
Greyhawk Adventures
appeared shortly afterward. The book's title was borrowed from Rose
Estes' "Greyhawk Adventures" line of novels and used the same
front-cover banner design. It was the thirteenth and final
hardcover book published for the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons rules.

The contents were designed to give Dungeon Masters ideas and play
opportunities unique to the Greyhawk world, including new monsters,
magical spells and magical items; wondrous geographical features;
and profiles of prominent citizens and the avatars of deities. In
the time since Gygax had left TSR, no original Greyhawk material
had been published, and many letter writers had requested ideas for
new adventures. Ward responded by including six plot outlines that
could be inserted into a Greyhawk campaign.

The City of Greyhawk boxed set

The publication of Greyhawk Adventures came just as TSR
released the 2nd edition of D&D. In an attempt to ride the
combined wave of publicity resulting from the release of 2nd
edition, the release of the Greyhawk Adventures source
book and the relative popularity of Roses Estes' "Greyhawk
Adventure" novels, TSR released The
City of Greyhawk boxed set in 1989 under the "Greyhawk
Adventures" banner. This was not the city created by Gygax and
Kuntz, but a new plan built from references made in previously
published material. (For the complete contents of the boxed
set, seeCity of Greyhawk
)

The following year, in conjunction with this boxed set, TSR
published a trilogy of WGA (World of Greyhawk Adventure) modules by
Richard & Anne Brown—WGA1 Falcon's Revenge, WGA2
Falconmaster and WGA3 Flames of the Falcon—set in
the city and centred around a mysterious villain called "The
Falcon." A fourth WGA module published the same year, WGA4 Vecna Lives! by David Cook,
featured the first appearance by Vecna,
formerly just a mythic lich in
D&D lore, but now promoted to demigod status.

Modules released under the "Greyhawk Adventures" banner

TSR also released five new WG (World of Grehyawk) adventures which
used the "Greyhawk Adventures" banner:

In 1990, TSR also published WGR1
Greyhawk Ruins, a module and source book about Castle
Greyhawk by TSR writers Blake Mobley and Timothy Brown. Although this
was not the Castle Greyhawk of Gygax and Kuntz, it was the first
serious attempt to publish details of the Castle.

1991–1997: A new vision of the Flanaess

In 1990, TSR decided that the decade-old world of Greyhawk needed
to be refreshed. Rather than expanding beyond the boundaries of the
Flanaess to develop new lands and new stories, the decision was
made to stay within the Flanaess and instead, move the campaign
timeline forward a decade, from 576 CY to 586 CY, in
order to provide the setting for a new storyline.

The main story vehicle to move the timeline forward would be a war
fomented by Iuz that would embroil the entire Flanaess, a device
that would allow TSR to radically alter the pattern of regions,
alliances and rulers from Gygax's original vision.

The Greyhawk Wars

In order to move players from Gygax's familiar World of Greyhawk to
their new vision, TSR planned a trilogy of modules that would
familiarize players with events and conditions leading up to the
coming war, and then take them through the war itself. Once players
completed the war via the three modules, a new boxed set would be
published to introduce the new storyline and the new Flanaess. Part
of the reworking of the world was the remolding of Gary Gygax's old
"Circle of Eight" into a new plot device. Instead of a group of
eight companions (all characters belonging to Gygax) who sallied
forth from an impregnable bastion to fight evil, the Circle became
eight wizards whose names were well known to D&D players, since
Gygax had used their names to describe various spells:
Mordenkainen, Bigby, Otiluke, Drawmij, Tenser, Nystul, Otto, and
Rary. Now the Circle's mandate was to act as neutral referees
between Good and Evil, never letting one side or the other gain the
upper hand for long.

The third module was reworked into Greyhawk Wars, a strategy wargame
that led players through the events, strategies and alliances of
the actual war. A booklet included with the game, Greyhawk Wars
Adventurer's Book, described the war in detail: In 582 CY (six
years after Gygax's original setting of 576 CY), a regional
conflict started by Iuz gradually widened until it was a war that
affected almost every nation in the Flanaess. A peace treaty was
finally signed in the city of Greyhawk two years later, which is
why the conflict became know as the Greyhawk Wars. On the day of
the treaty-signing, Rary—once a minor spellcaster created and then
discarded by Brian Blume but now elevated by TSR to the Circle of
Eight—attacked his fellow Circle members, aided and abetted by
Robilar. After the attack, Tenser and Otiluke were dead, while Robilar and Rary fled to
the deserts of the Bright Lands. (Rob
Kuntz, original creator of Robilar, objected to this storyline
since he believed that Robilar would never attack his old
adventuring companion Mordenkainen. Although Kuntz did not own the
creative rights to Robilar and no longer worked at TSR, he
unofficially suggested an alternate storyline that Robilar had been
visiting another plane and in his absence, a clone or evil twin of
Robilar was responsible for this outrage.)

From the Ashes

In 1992, after the two WGS "prequel" modules and the Greyhawk
Wars game had been on the market for some months, TSR released
the new Greyhawk setting, From the Ashes,
a boxed set primarily written by Carl
Sargent that described the Flanaess in the aftermath of the
Greyhawk Wars. This contained a large 4-colour hex map of the area
around the city of Greyhawk, a number of "quick adventure cards",
and two 96-page books. The first book, Atlas of the
Flanaess, was a replacement for Gygax's original World of
Greyhawk boxed set, albeit with some changes:

Many human gods from previous editions were not included,
although one new demigod, Mayaheine, was
added. This had the net effect of reducing the total number of
human deities from 50 to 28.

Deities of other races were increased from 24 to 38, but unlike
the full descriptions that were given to the human gods, these were
simply listed by name.

Like Gygax's original boxed set, each region was given a 200-
to 300- word precis, although some details included in the older
edition, such as trade goods, total population and racial mixes,
were not included in this edition. A number of regions—Ahlissa,
Almor, Medegia and South Province—no longer existed after the Wars
or had been folded into other regions. Two new regions—the Plains of the Paynims and the Olman
Islands—were added. This had the net effect of reducing the total
number of regions from 60 to 58.

Darlene Pekul's large 4-colour 2-piece fold-out map of the
Flanaess included in Gygax's setting was reduced to a small black
& white map printed on the inside cover of the
Atlas.

The second book, the Campaign Book, was designed as a
supplement to the 4-year-old City of Greyhawk boxed set,
not meant to replace it but only to update some of the details of
the city and its environs, as well as give details of some new
non-player characters and possible adventure hooks.

In Gygax's setting, the major conflict had been between the Great
Kingdom and the lands that were trying to free themselves from the
evil overking. In Sargent's world, the Great Kingdom storyline was
largely replaced by the major new conflict between the land of Iuz
and the regions that surrounded it. Southern lands outside of Iuz's
reach faced the menace of the Scarlet Brotherhood, while in other
parts of the world, some countries had been invaded by monsters and
others had been taken over by agents of evil. Overall, the vision
was of a darker world where good folk were being swamped by a tide
of evil. ("The cult of Mayaheine is one considerably on the
increase in beleaguered non-evil Flanaess lands, for Mayaheine is a
demipower of protection and survival")

Sargent tried to generate interest for this grimmer vision of the
Flanaess by following up with an article in Dragon's Issue
191 (March 1993): "...the powers of evil have waxed
strong.The hand of Iuz, the Old One, extends across the
central Flanaess, and the cruel Scarlet Brotherhood extends its
power and influence around the southern lands bordering the Azure
Sea.The WORLD OF GREYHAWK setting has become a truly
exciting world again..."

The boxed set was supported by the publication of two new source
books in 1993, also written by Sargent:

WGR4 The Marklands
provided information about the good realms of Furyondy, Highfolk,
and Nyrond that opposed Iuz.

WGR5 Iuz the Evil detailed
information about the lands of Iuz, and emphasized the prominent
new role that Iuz now played in the world order.

In addition, a number of adventures were also published, as much to
provide more source material as for adventure:

WGQ1 Patriots of Ulek
was the first module published after From the Ashes, and
advanced the storyline in Ulek, threatened by
invasion from Turrosh Mak of the Pomarj.

WGR2 Treasures of
Greyhawk by Jack Barker, Roy Rowe, Louis Prosperi and Tom
Prusa was a loosely connected series of mini-adventures—for
instance, exploring Bigby's home, travelling to the demiplane
called The Great Maze of Zagyg, and trading riddles with a sphinx. Each mini-adventure focussed on a unique
treasure in the Flanaess.

WGR3 Rary the Traitor
by Anthony Pryor was both an adventure module as well as a source
book about the Bright Lands, the new
home of Rary and Robilar following their murder of Tenser and
Otiluke.

Like Gygax had done ten years before, Sargent also used the pages
of Dragon to promote his new world. He was working on a
new source book, Ivid the
Undying, and excerpted parts of it in Issues 204, 206
& 208 (April, June and August 1994).

TSR drops Greyhawk

However, in late 1994, TSR abruptly killed Sargent's new book just
as it was being readied for publication, and stopped work on all
other Greyhawk projects. Nothing more about Greyhawk was ever
published by TSR with one exception: in May 1995, a Dragon
column devoted to industry gossip noted that the "lost manuscript"
of Ivid the Undying had been released by TSR as a computer
text file. Using this file, several people have reconstructed the
book as it might have appeared in published form.

1998–2008: Wizards of the Coast

After Wizards of the Coast (WotC) and TSR merged, the determination
was made that TSR had created too many settings for the D&D
game, and several of them were eliminated. However, WotC's CEO,
Peter Adkison, was a fan of both
D&D and Greyhawk, and two major initiatives were created: a
revival of Greyhawk, and a new (third) edition of D&D rules. A
team of people was put together to revive the moribund Greyhawk
setting by pulling together all the previously published
information about the campaign setting. Once that was done, the
decision was made to update Carl Sargent's storyline, and in much
the same way as Sargent had done, using "prequel" adventures to
pave the way for the new campaign setting.

First, Roger E.Moore created Return of the Eight in 1998. In
this adventure, set in 586 CY (the same year as the From the
Ashes boxed set), the players meet the surviving members of
the Circle of Eight (now called the "Circle of Five" because it was
missing Tenser, Otiluke and Rary). If the players successfully
finish the adventure, Tenser is rescued from death (although he
refuses to rejoin the Circle), and the Circle is reconstituted as
Eight with the addition of three new wizards: Alhamazad the Wise, Theodain Eriason and Warnes Starcoat.

Next, the Greyhawk Player's
Guide by Anne Brown was released. This 64-page booklet
moved the storyline ahead 6 years to 591 CY, and it mostly
condensed and reiterated material that had been released in Gygax's
and Sargent's boxed sets. New material included important
non-player characters, a guide to roleplaying in the Flanaess, and
some new sights. The list of deities was both shrunk and expanded;
the 38 non-human deities in the From the Ashes boxed set
were eliminated and non-human concerns assigned to a handful of
human deities, but the list of human deities was expanded from 24
to 54.

With the groundwork for a new storyline prepared, TSR/WotC released
the new campaign setting as a 128-page sourcebook, The Adventure Begins by Roger E.Moore.
Taking its lead from the Greyhawk Player's Guide, the new
campaign world was set in 591 CY. Unlike the darker feel of
From the Ashes, where the Flanaess was slowly drowning in
evil, Moore returned to Gygax's world of adventure.

25th Anniversary of D&D

The year 1999 marked 25 years since the publication of the original
D&D rules, and WotC sought to lure older gamers back to
Greyhawk by producing a series of nostalgia-tinged "Return
to..." adventures that evoked the best-known Greyhawk modules
from 20 years before, under the banner "25th Anniversary of
D&D":

Return to
the Temple of Elemental Evil by Monte Cook returned the
players to Gygax's infamous temple that Rob Kuntz (as Robilar) had
originally trashed. (Published in 2001 to D&D's 3rd edition
rules)

In conjunction with the publication of the "Return to" adventures,
WotC also produced a series of companion novels: Against the
Giants, White Plume Mountain, Descent into the
Depths of the Earth, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks,
The Temple of Elemental Evil, Queen of the Demonweb
Pits, Keep on the Borderlands,and The Tomb of
Horrors.

In an attempt to attract players of other D&D settings, WotC
released Die, Vecna, Die!
by Bruce R. Cordell and Steve Miller, a three-part adventure tying
Greyhawk to the Ravenloft and Planescape campaign settings. Published in 2000,
it was the last adventure to be written for D&D's 2nd edition
rules.

Third edition

In the editions of D&D published by TSR, the setting of the
game had not been specifically defined—Dungeon Masters were
expected to either create a new world, or purchase a commercial
campaign setting such as Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. In 2000, after two years
of work and test-play, WotC released the 3rd edition of D&D,
and for the first time, defined a "default" setting for the game:
the world of Greyhawk. Under third edition rules, unless a Dungeon
Master specifically chose to use a different campaign setting, his
or her D&D game would be set in the world of Greyhawk.

Living Greyhawk

the release of the 3rd edition of D&D, RPGA—the organized play division of WotC—announced a
new massively shared living
campaign, Living
Greyhawk, modelled on a 2nd edition campaign called
Living City. Although
Living City was relatively successful, RPGA wanted to
expand the scope of their new campaign—instead of one city as a
setting, the new campaign would involve 30 different regions of
Greyhawk, each specifically keyed to a particular country, state or
province of the real world. Each region would produce its own
adventures, and in addition to these, RPGA would provide worldwide
"core" adventures. To provide the level of detail needed for such a
venture, WotC published the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer,
the most in-depth examination of the world of Greyhawk ever
produced, and the official starting point for not only the
campaign, but also for all home campaigns from that point
forward.

The concept of Living Greyhawk was introduced at Gencon 2000 with the adventure The Fright at Tristor by Keith
Polster, although the campaign was not officially launched until
the release of the first "core" adventures the following summer at
Origins 2001. Unlike previous
campaign settings where the calendar was frozen at a point chosen
by the author, the Living Greyhawk calendar did advance one year in
game time for every calendar year in real time: the campaign
started in 591 CY (2001) and ended in 598 CY (2008), at which point
over 1000 adventures had been produced for an audience of over
10,000 players. During this time, the campaign administrators
incorporated most of WotC's new rules releases into the Greyhawk
world (only excising material they felt would "unbalance" the
campaign by either providing too much power to the players or to
the adventure writers). In 2005, the administrators incorporated
every deity ever mentioned in official Greyhawk material previous
to 3rd edition, as well as all deities mentioned in new 3rd edition
source books. This tripled the number of deities in the campaign
from about 70 to almost 200.

However, despite the massive amount of world and storyline
development, none of the Living Greyhawk storylines or
changes to the setting were considered "official" since the
regional adventure modules were produced by volunteers, and only
received a cursory vetting by the campaign administrators of RPGA
and no review by WotC personnel.

WotC Greyhawk releases

Despite the popularity of the Living Greyhawk campaign,
WotC did not produce much material for Greyhawk after the 25th
anniversary "Return to..." series of adventures mentioned above,
other than the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and Fright at
Tristor. The Standing Stone (2001) by John D.
Rateliff did have several minor references to the Greyhawk setting,
and Red Hand of Doom
(2006) by James Jacob contained instructions for where to set the
adventure within the world of Greyhawk (as well as for Forgotten Realms and Eberron). Otherwise, WotC left the development of
the Greyhawk world to RPGA's Living Greyhawk campaign and
concentrated on producing more source books of new expansion
material for the core rules of D&D.

2008 to Present

At Gencon 2007, WotC announced that the 4th
edition of D&D (D&D 4E) would be released the following
spring, and Greyhawk would no longer be the default campaign
setting under the new rules system. For this reason, Living
Greyhawk was not converted to the new rules system; instead,
it was brought to a conclusion at Origins 2008.

In 2009, WotC released The Village of Hommlet (Andy
Collins). It is not available for purchase; rather, it is sent as a
reward to anyone signing up for the RPGA. It updates Gygax'
Village of Hommlet to 4E. This is the only published
official 4E material for the World of Greyhawk setting to date,
although Mike Mearls' RPGA adventure Return to the
Moathouse is also based on the original Village of
Hommlet.

Unofficial Greyhawk sources

Although TSR and then WotC had owned the official rights to the
World of Greyhawk since the first folio edition was published in
1980, the two people most responsible for its early development,
Gary Gygax and Rob
Kuntz, still had most of their original notes regarding the 50
levels of dungeons under Castle Greyhawk. In addition, Gygax also
had his old maps of the city of Greyhawk, and still owned the
rights to Gord the Rogue.

After Gygax left TSR in 1985, he continued to write a few more
Gord the Rogue novels, which were published by New
Infinities Productions: Sea of Death (1987), City of
Hawks (1987), and Come Endless Darkness (1988).
However, by this time, Gygax was furious with the new direction in
which TSR was taking "his" world. In a literary declaration that
his old world of Oerth was dead, and wanting to make a clean break
with all things Greyhawk, Gygax destroyed his version of Oerth in
the final Gord the Rogue novel, Dance of Demons.
For the next 15 years, he worked to develop other game
systems.

But there was still the matter of the unpublished dungeons under
Castle Greyhawk. Although Gygax had given tantalizing glimpses into
the dungeons in his magazine columns and articles, the dungeons
themselves had never been released to the public. Likewise Gygax's
version of the city of Greyhawk had never been published, although
Frank Mentzer believed the reason for
that was because "the City of Greyhawk was a later development,
originally being but a location (albeit a capital).As
such it was never fleshed out all that thoroughly... notes on
certain locations and notorious personnel, a sketch map of great
brevity, and otherwise quite loose.That is doubtless why
Gary didn't publish it; it had never been completed."

However, in 2003, Gygax announced that he was working with Rob
Kuntz to publish the original castle and city in 6 volumes,
although the project would use the rules for Castles and Crusades rather than
D&D. Since WotC still owned the rights to the name "Greyhawk",
Gygax changed the name of the castle to "Castle Zagyg"—the reverse
homophone of his own name originally ascribed to the mad architect
of his original 13-level dungeon. Gygax also changed the name of
the nearby city to "Yggsburgh", a play on his initials E.G.G.

This project proved to be much more work than Gygax and Kuntz had
envisioned. By the time Gygax and Kuntz had stopped working on the
original home campaign, the castle dungeons had encompassed 50
levels of cunningly complex passages and thousands of rooms and
traps. This, plus plans for the city of Yggsburgh and encounter
areas outside the castle and city, would clearly be too much to fit
into the proposed 6 volumes. Gygax decided he would recreate
something like his original 13-level dungeon, amalgamating the best
of what could be gleaned from binders and boxes of old notes.
However, neither Gygax nor Kuntz had kept careful or comprehensive
plans. Because they had often made up details of play sessions on
the spot, they usually just scribbled a quick map as they played,
with cursory notes about monsters, treasures and traps. These
sketchy maps contained just enough detail so that the two could
ensure their independent work would dovetail. All of these old
notes had to be deciphered, 25-year-old memories dredged up as to
what had happened in each room, and a decision made whether to keep
or discard each new piece. Recreating the city too, would be a
challenge; although Gygax still had his old maps of the original
city, all of his previously published work on the city was owned by
WotC, so he would have to create most of the city from scratch
while still maintaining the "look and feel" of his original.

Even this slow and laborious process came to a complete halt in
April 2004 when Gygax suffered a serious stroke. Although he returned to his keyboard after a
seven-month convalescence, his output was reduced from 14-hour work
days to only one or two hours per day. Kuntz had to withdraw due to
other projects, although he continued to work on an adventure
module that would be published at the same time as the first book.
Under these circumstances, work on the Castle Zagyg project
continued even more slowly, although Jeffrey Talanian stepped in to
help Gygax. Finally in 2005, Troll Lord
Games published Volume I, Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh.
This 256-page hardcover book contained details of Gygax's original
city, its personalities and politics, as well as over 30 encounters
outside the city. The two-part fold-out map of the area was
rendered by Darlene Pekul, the same artist who had produced the
original map for the folio edition of World of Greyhawk.
Later that year, Troll Lord Games also published Castle Zagyg:
Dark Chateau, an adventure module written for the Yggsburgh
setting by Rob Kuntz.

Book catalogs published in 2005 indicated several more volumes in
the series would follow shortly, but it wasn't until 2008 that the
second volume, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works, appeared.
The Upper Works described details of the castle above
ground, acting as a teaser for the volumes concerning the actual
dungeons that would follow. However, Gygax died in March 2008
before any further books were published. After his death, Gygax
Games, under the control of Gary's widow Gail, took over the
project, but to date no more volumes of the Castle Zagyg project
have been published.

Rob Kuntz has also published some of his creative work within the
Greyhawk dungeons, releasing in 2008 the adventure modules The
Living Room, a whimsical but very dangerous room in the
Greyhawk dungeons that housed enormous furniture; and Bottle
City, a seemingly innocuous bottle found on the second level
of the Greyhawk dungeons that contained within it an entire city.
2009 saw Kuntz release Daemonic & Arcane (a collection
of Greyhawk and Kalibruhn magic items) and The Stalk (a
wilderness adventure from Greyhawk), with plans to publish Kuntz's
original levels contributed to Castle Greyhawk.

See also

References

Gygax: "As the members began to get tired of medieval
games, and I wasn't, I decided to add fantasy elements to the mix,
such as a dragon that had a fire-breath weapon, a 'hero' that was
worth four normal warriors, a wizard who could cast fireballs (the
range and hit diameter of a large catapult) and lightning bolts
(the range and hit area of a cannon), and so forth. I converted a
plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no
models of them around in those days."

Gygax: "The reception of fantasy elements in the medieval
tabletop wargame was incredibly enthusiastic by about 90% of the
old group. Lee Tucker dismissed it, and me. Mike Reese and Jeff
Perren were not captivated by giants hurling boulders and dragons
breathing fire and lightning bolts, nor did wizards with spells,
heroes and superheroes with magic armor and swords prove compelling
to them."

Gygax: "I would use my point buys to take a superhero in
magic armor, with a magic sword, backed up by a wizard with
fireball spells. The superhero would assail the mass of enemy
troops, and when they gathered round to attack him the wizard would
drop a fireball on the lot. The superhero was very likely to come
out unscathed, much to the fury of my opponents."

Gygax: "I wrote the Chainmail Medieval Military miniatures
Rules "Man-to-Man" and "Fantasy Supplement" c. 1970, and the
booklet was published in 1971."

Arneson: "See, I had this neat German plastic kit [of a
castle]. Oddly enough, even though it was actually a German kit,
years later I learned that it was actually a model of a castle in
Sicily. But when I started, I was thinking German."

Arneson: "[The concept of a fantasy campaign] just grew and
shortly [the plastic castle] was too small for the scale I wanted.
But it was a neat kit and I didn’t want to abandon it, so the only
way to go was down [into the dungeons]. All this happened a few
weeks before the first adventurers caught sight of it."

Gygax: "Dave Arneson and I met at a GenCon here in Lake
Geneva around 1968, and with Mike Carr we authored the Don't
Give Up the Ship naval miniatures rules for the Great Age
of Sail around 1971-2."

Arneson: "We were in correspondence with the group from
Lake Geneva through the Napoleonic Campaigns at that time, so we
mentioned that we were doing fantasy stuff on alternate weekends
and they became very interested in it."

Gygax: "Dave was running a man-to-man (1 figure = one
person) Chainmail fantasy campaign around then, and he... came down
from the Twin Cities to see us, the gaming group, in Lake Geneva in
the late autumn of 1972. Arneson brought some of his campaign
material with him..."

Gygax: "I was as much taken with the prototype of the
D&D game as anyone..."

Gygax: "Credit Dave Arneson and Dave Megary (designer of
the Dungeon! boardgame) with my concentrating on subterranean
settings for the D&D game. The contained adventuring
environment was perfect for establishing fixed encounters before a
game session, and for developing progressively more hazardous ones
as the PCs grew in their capacity to manage them."

Gygax: "It was in the late fall of 1972 when I completed a
map of some castle ruins, noted ways down to the dungeon level
(singular), and invited my 11-year-old son Ernie and nine-year-old
daughter Elise to create characters and adventure. This they did,
and around 9 PM ... they had to come back from such imaginary
derring-do, put their index card character sheets aside, and get
ready for bed. They had had a marvelous time and wanted to keep
playing."

Q: "What was the first ever monster killed by a PC in
D&D?" Gygax: "A giant centipede, with the 1st level PCs played
by my son Ernie (fighter) and daughter Elise (cleric)."

Gygax: "The monsters first encountered, by son Ernie's and
daughter Elise's characters, were a nest of scorpions in some
rubble in the very first room of the dungeon they entered. The
glint of coins was mentioned to lure the incautious hand into
attack proximity, but Elise's PC used a dagger to poke around, and
the scorpions were spotted. Eventually one managed to sting, but
the poison saving throw was made."

Gygax: "They next encountered and defeated a gang of
kobolds with a chest of 3,000 copper pieces. Needless to say, they
weren't pleased with the treasure."

Gygax: "Later in the long session of exploration, the two
intrepid adventurers came upon the lair of several kobolds, slew
two and the rest fled. They found an iron chest filled with
coins...several thousand copper pieces--that was too heavy to move.
A big disappointment."

Gygax: "After they went upstairs I stayed in my study and
went to work on a second dungeon level."

Gygax: "In a couple of days time Don Kaye (Murlynd), Rob
(Robilar, Otto) and Terry (Terik) Kuntz joined the gang."

Gygax: "The castle and dungeons came about a month before
the first, one-page map of the City of Greyhawk."

Gygax: "An average of seven gaming sessions a week was
typical even when I was busy working. Often I played more than
that. "

Gygax: "When I initiated the Greyhawk campaign, I envisaged
a world of parallel earth sort. Thus the geography then assumed was
pretty close to that of earth. Being busy running game sessions,
creating dungeon levels, the map of Greyhawk City, writing new
material, and also really enjoying 'winging it', I never did a
large-scale map for the world."

Gygax: "The planet was much like our earth. The city of
Greyhawk was located on the [Great] lakes in about the position
that Chicago is, and Dyvers was north at the Milwaukee location.
The general culture was pseudo medieval European. Some of the
kingdoms shown on the WoG map were around the adventure-central
area, the City of Greyhawk."

Gygax: "When I was using the pre-World of Greyhawk map for
my world setting, the West Coast of North America was the
Pleistocene region inhabited by savage cavemen and their
contemporary fauna."

Gygax: "Zagyg is based on a sort of joke--me as the mad
designer of Greyhawk Castle and its dungeons. After all, how else
could such a place exist?

Gygax: "Rob, playing Robilar solo, delved into the dungeon,
made it. Ernie, noting Rob's absence from adventuring with the
party, sent Tenser on a solo quest to discover Robilar's
whereabouts. He managed to follow a similar path, and made level
13. Then Terry Kuntz noted both of his usual companions were not
available to play, went forth with Terik, and made the lowest level
successfully... No other players in the group managed
that."

Gygax: "When a character got down to this level there was
no going back. The one managing that was given an appropriate
reward then sent on a giant, one-way slide clear through to the
other side of the world."

"Robilar was one of the first to make it around the Oerth. By
entering the lowest level in Greyhawk Castle, he was propelled by a
magical slide to what would be modern day 'China.' Teric and Tenser
followed, as they missed his return to the first level of the
Castle, which, as a team, this trio held sway over. They caught up
with him by scrying and they finished the adventure together."

Gygax: "Many of them, the "regulars" numbering around a
dozen, were there seeking daily adventure sessions, while the
majority of the others showed up to play on weekends. Sometimes
there were over 20 D&D gamers gathered in my
basement."

Gygax: "I enlisted Rob as co-DM for my campaign too, as it
took two of us to manage the large player groups, and also to run
all the game sessions demanded by smaller parties. Often times
there were two long sessions a day in 1974 and 1975. I had to write
material, so Rob ran many of them."

Gygax: "There were well over 60 different players that
participated in in the game sessions that I ran, and that's one of
the reasons that I had Rob Kuntz join me as co-DM."

Gygax: "An average of seven gaming sessions a week was
typical even when I was busy working. Often I played more than
that. Rob would DM for me one-on-one where I mostly
roleplayed..."

Gygax: "When after a couple of year's of time Rob became my
co-DM there was a massive alteration in the upper works of the
castle, a whole, massive new 1st level was created, and then the
level plan for the expanded lower levels of the dungeon was created
anew, with the original levels of my making incorporated with those
of Rob's dungeons, plus a number of new ones we created to fill the
whole scheme."

Gygax: "I ceased the campaign in 1985 when I severed all
times with TSR. I have used it on occasion since, of course, but
nor for regular, ongoing play."

Gygax: "The whole of the combined material Rob and I put
together would be far too large for publication, 50 levels or
so."

Q: "I'm curious as to, in the early D&D games, how much
character and personality did the players put into the PC's?"
Gygax: "The main thrust for most players back then was the action,
so a few PCs were unnamed, and we referred to them rather
caustically as 'Joe's fighter' or 'Bob's cleric'. The core group,
the regulars, were much more concerned with developing their PCs,
interacting with each other and some NPCs in character."

Q: "Did you make up named spells like Melf's acid
arrow, Otiluke's resilient sphere and
Mordenkainen's disjunction yourself, or did these come from
player research?" Gygax: "All of those spells I made up, usually to
honor a PC in my campaign, or for the person who suggested the
basis. Tasha [Tasha's hideous laughter] was a little girl who
sent me letters in crayon, Nystul [Nystul's magic aura]
was an actual stage magician I met through Len Lakofka. Melf
[Melf's acid arrow] was a PC of son Luke, and Otiluke
[Otiluke's resilient sphere] was a combination of a couple
of his other PCs."

Gygax: The next day they played, and with their PCs were
two new ones, that of Rob Kuntz and Don Kaye's Murlynd."

Gygax: "In general most of the players, myself included
when initially adventuring and not DMing, thought little of the
PC's name, but more about what thrilling things would transpire.
Thus my first character was named Yrag, and some of the younger
fellows in the group didn't even name their PC. Don Kaye was a
semi-exception with Murlynd. As I became a bit more engaged in the
broader possibility spectrum of the game I did a more seriously
considered PC [Mordenkainen]... That became common with most of the
veterans in our group around that time."

Gygax: "We did WWII, modern city, and a bit of wild west...
SF action was common... About one session in every 12 would involve
somethingfrom outside the fantasy genre. That was enough to keep
things from getting too staid."

Kuntz: "Don was a great fan of the Western and an avid
supporter of the Boot Hill rules."

Gygax: "The strange wands that Murlynd used made a loud
noise and delivered a damaging missile, but neither effect was due
to gunpowder. These were very rare magic items devised by Murlynd's
arcane understanding of technology and how to make it function
magically."

Kuntz: "Robilar's name is derived from Gary's novel,
The Gnome Cache. Written prior to the formation of TSR, Robilar
occurs therein as the baron who sends the questing Dunstan after
the gnome treasure. Since I had contributed a minor sequence idea
to the novel (wherein Dunstan, having succeeded, requires the Baron
Robilar to uphold his part of the bargain by knighting him, which
he does, quickly and without ceremony and then runs off to claim
fame from higher-ups for "his", the Baron's, success) Gary later
suggested the name for my primary PC in Greyhawk."

Q:"What was the largest party Robilar ever adventured with
(I mean, with other player characters)?" Kuntz: "Probably 6-7 in
the earlier days. That then was too much for my wonts, which
spurred me to seek solo adventures when possible."

Kuntz: "Gary was none too happy with Robilar's adventure
beneath the Temple of Elemental Evil. Robilar had a great time
dismembering creatures, crunching things and watching Gary's look
of consternation grow with every toppled column. The final straw
was the releasing of Zuggtmoy. The DM's vendetta pursued Robilar
all the way back to his castle, which he was forced to
abandon."

Kuntz: "Losing my castle was a major defeat, but I decided
to abandon it because [Gygax] was noticeably intent on getting even
with me for the Temple of Elemental Evil sacking I’d
perpetrated."

Kuntz: "The city, at the instigation of those Good forces,
especially Tenser, had [the Green Dragon] confiscated."

Kuntz: "Robilar, along with Teric and Tenser, formed a
triumvirate and took over the first level of Castle Greyhawk for a
while. They barracked their respective forces there and guarded
ingress and egress, using the location as a base for further
adventures deep within the sprawling castle complex. "

Gygax: "Ernie, noting Rob's absence from adventuring with
the party, sent Tenser on a solo quest to discover Robilar's
whereabouts. He managed to follow a similar path, and made level
13."

Gygax: "My first PC was a fghter named Yrag, back in
1972."

Q: "Of the characters you have played, which is your
favorite?" Gygax: "I really must admit Mordenkainen is my favorite.
I enjoy playing fighters, rangers, thieves, clerics, and
multi-classed sorts in OAD&D, but the magic-user is usually
most fun for me."

Gygax: "Mordenkainen came into being about the first month
of 1973."

Gygax: "The background I created for Mordenkainen was
Finnish-like in nature, and his master was a chap
called...Vainomoinen, sometimes referred to as 'Old Waino.' I
really was captivated with Finnish myth after seeing a B&W
movie done by the Russians, I think, about [Vainomoinen],
Leminkainen, and Ilmarinen adventuring to Pojola and entering
Louhi's fortress, then reading The Green Magician by de
Camp and Pratt as well as the Kalevala."

Gygax: "I do believe that Mordenkainen earned his
twenty-something levels through cleverness, daring, a bit of luck,
and dint of trying..."

Q: "May we see [Mordenkainen's] stats?" Gygax: "Can you see
Mordie's stats? No! I won't even show you those for my most recent
PC, Louhi Sharpnose, a gnome illusionist and treasure finder who I
created only about four years back."

Gygax: "Mordenkainen was adventuring in Rob's dungeon when
he surprised a 3rd level magic-user of Evil persuation.
Mordie's charm spell worked on that worthy, whose name
turned out to be Bigby. By dint of fellowship, lecturing,
mentoring, and sharing with Bigby, he was not only turned from
[Evil] to Neutral, but from there to a leaning towards [Good] as he
considered his past actions."

Q: "I heard a story which made it sound like Bigy was an
NPC that you charmed and [who] later became your PC." Gygax:
"Mordenkainen did indeed manage to get the drop on Bigby, [and]
charm him. At the time Bigby was a 3rd-level [Evil] dungeon
dweller. By word and deen Mordie brought him around from [Evil] to
[Neutral], and thus Bigby became his apprentice. I got to roll the
stats for that character after Rob [Kuntz] determined he was a
loyal henchman of Mordenkainen."

Gygax: "[Rary] was one that Brian Blume created early in
the D&D cycle, a magic-user that Brian wanted to work up to 3rd
level so as to introduce him as 'Medium Rary.' When he gained that
level Brian quit playing that PC, pretty much dropped out of
regularly playing D&D in fact."

Gygax: "The original [Circle of Eight] was composed of my
PCs--Mordenkainen, Bigby, Yrag, Rigby, Felnorith, Zigby, Vram &
Vin. In the novel version the Circle was expanded to encompass
other PCs in my campaign such as Tenser. It came into being because
Mordenkainen and Associates had a lot of wealth stored up from
successful adventuring, located a place for a stronghold deep in
enemy territory to assure plenty of action, and then went to work
building the citadel. As there was an small army of dwarves
associted with the larger, mounted field army, the building project
went relatively quickly, about three game years to complete. While
it was in progress, the 'boys' were active in raiding the lands
around to keep the enemy forces back on their heels."

Gygax: "The Obsidian Citadel was indeed my personal
creation as a player.... It was an octagonal castle with eight wall
towers and a central keep with much space between the outer wall
and the inner works because of the number of troops housed in this
fortress.

Gygax: "The Obsidian Citadel and its Circle of Eight was
original to my own campaign. When Mordenkainen was at a level I
considered too high for normal adventuring, I used the money he and
his associates had amassed to construct the said fortress. The
members of the 'Circle were Mordenkainen and...others of my PCs:
Bigby, Yrag the fighter, Rigby the cleric, Zigby the Dwarf, the
Elves Vram and Vin, and Felnorith as principles. A number of lesser
PCs were [also] associated."

Kuntz: "Before [Gygax] codified the gods there [were] Norse
Gods... Robilar really only mentioned Odin once or twice; Mornard's
Gronan as well as Ratners's Ayelerach both swore by Crom."

Gygax: "St. Cuthbert was more of a joke than otherwise.
Consider the advocacy of pounding sense into someone's head by dint
of blows from a club."

Gygax: "The development of anything akin to a logical
pantheon of deities for the world setting took a considerable
period of time to complete because we seldom dealt with such
entities in play. St. Cuthbert and Pholtus were amusing to the
players with cleric PCs so I spent time detailing them. The balance
then followed as I brought into play evil deities to serve as
villians and to frustrate the aims of the PCs."

Gygax: "When I initially began creating adventure material
I assumed that the GMs utilizing the work would prefer substance
without window dressing, the latter being properly the realm of the
GM so as to suit the campaign world and player group."

Gygax: "As I was running a game with a large number of
players involved, I really didn't want to supply them with the
whole world on a platter."

Gygax: "When I was asked by TSR to do my World of
Greyhawk as a commercial product I was taken aback. I had
assumed most DMs would far prefer to use their own world
settings."

Q: "In Dragon 315, Jim Ward talks about the origins of the
Greyhawk setting, and is quoted as having said: 'He [Gygax] had the
whole world mapped out'. Does this mean you have material about the
rest of Oerth hidden in your basement?" Gygax: "Yes, I had a sketch
map of the remainder of the globe..."

Gygax: "The exact form of the remainder of the globe was
not settled upon. I wanted an Atlantis-like continent, and possibly
a Lemurian-type one. Likely two large continents would have been
added. The nearest would house cultures akin to the Indian,
Burmese, Indonesian, Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese. Another would
likely have been the location of African-type cultures, including
the Egyptian. A Lemurian culture would have been based on the
Central and South American cultures of the Aztec-Mayay-Inca
sort."

Gygax: "When I was asked to create a campaign setting for
TSR to market, I did a new and compact "world"--that only in part,
of course, as that was all I could fit onto the two maps allowed.
So that became the World of Greyhawk."

Gygax: "I found out the maximum map size TSR could produce,
got the go-ahead for two maps of that size, then sat down for a
couple of weeks and hand-drew the whole thing. After the maps were
done and the features shown were named, I wrote up brief
information of the features and states. Much of the information was
drawn from my own personal world, but altered to fit the new one
depicted on the maps."

Gygax: "The World of Greyhawk setting was crafted to allow
for individualization by DMs, of course, and so was as non-specific
and vague in places where the DM was likely to have created his own
material."

Gygax: "When I did the map for the World of Greyhawk
product I made up 90% of the material on the spot...and liked it
better than what I had been doing so switched my own campaign to
the newly created world of Oerth. Only the places surrounding the
City of Greyhawk came from my original campaign setting."

Gygax knew that Len Lakofka's first TSR adventure,
The Secret of Bone Hill, was
being readied for publication. It was set in Lakofka's home
campaign setting of Lendore Island, so Gygax added that placename
to the Spindrift Islands archipelago, and slyly added a reference
to Lakofka in the description of the islands: "Lendore Isle is
named for the Arch Mage who founded it, but tales of him and the
fellowship he brought to the Spindrifts are all but lost."

Ket was accidentally left out of the Table of Contents in the
folio edition.

Valley of the Mage was accidentally left out of the Table of
Contents in the folio edition.

Gygax borrowed the name of Dave Arneson's campaign world,
Blackmoor, for one of his regions. However, his intention was not
to move any part of Arneson's campaign to his own, and the Greyhawk
region of Blackmoor bore no resemblance to Arneson's world, other
than a sly reference to a ruined castle and "extensive ruins are
supposed to exist under these ruins.". Gygax: "The Blackmoor on
the Oerik maps is certainly not the same as Dave Arneson's campaign
setting. I liked its ring, so I put it onto the map as I was making
up names for the various states.

Gygax: "Of course as my campaign world was active, had many
players, I did not wish to detail it [for the general
public], so I created Oerth, the continent of Oerik, and all
that went with it for general use by other DMs. I found I liked it
so well that I switched my group's play to the World of Greyhawk
soon after I had finished the maps and manuscript"

Gygax: "In regards to the timeline for the WoG setting, I
had no immediate plan for advancing it as the world was meant to be
used by all DMs so desirous, each making it conform to his own
campaign needs."

Gygax: "In general the player groups in my campaign were
not much interested in politics and warfare. When I played my PCs,
I was always meddling in politics and had a large army, so some
warfare was played out with Rob as the DM."

Gygax: "Greyhawk was set up to enable both political play
and large-scale warfare..."

Gygax: "The relatively low level of NPCs, and the balance
between alignments was done on purpose so as facilitate the use of
the world setting by all DMs. With a basically neutral environment,
the direction of the individual campaign was squarely in the hands
of the DM running it... That was done because to my way of thinking
dominance by one alignment group tends to restrict the potential
for adventuring."

"Often promised, but often delayed, WORLD OF GREYHAWK
sometimes appeared destined to never see the light of
publication... Soon the summer was fast disappearing, along with
most of our expectations, but on a fateful day in early August, the
cherished cry was finally raised. THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK had
arrived!"

Gygax: "I must accept the blame, of course, as I okayed the
material. Of course, being a DM who always flew by the seat of his
pants, I never used [the tables]... When I was running a game the
weather was what I said it was."

Gygax: "Had I remained in creative control of the D&D
game line at TSR one of the projects I planned was the complete
development of the Oerth world setting, and production of source
nodules for the various states and outstanding featires of the
Flanaess--such as the Roft Canyon, the Sea of Dust, etc."

Q: "What direction would have Greyhawk gone? How different
would it be today?" Gygax: "There would be a complete globe with
more continents and states thereon."

Gygax: I did intend to expand the WoG setting to cover the
complete planet... No real work had been done on this project,
though, when I parted from TSR at the end of 1985."

Gygax: "I had plans to create material detailing the
various states and major terrain features of the world setting, as
well as completing the world with a second boxed set.""

Gygax: "Francois had a map of a continent and some islands
to the east, and they were going to be added. The "Orient" wes
actually to be past them, closer to the West Coast of Oerik... Len
Lakofka had an eastern continental addition as well as the Lendore
Isles, so what I planned to so was incorporate Francois' and Len's
maps with Oerik, complete the lower continent below it, and have a
real globe."

]

]

]

]

Gygax: "I was alerted to a problem: Kevin Blume was
shopping TSR on the street in New York City. I flew back from the
West Coast, and discovered the corporation was in debt to the bank
the tune of circa $1.5 million."

Gygax: "Anagrams of my name are exclusively my property
according to my settlement agreement with TSR, so that is how I can
use Zagyg, or Zagig, as well as Yrag."

Gygax: "Later TSR and [Wizards of the Coast] approaches to
and treatment of the Greyhawk setting was quite contrary to the
purpose for which I intended it when it was created."

Gygax: "The original map of Greyhawk city was one sheet of
graph paper with colored boxes indicating various places where PC
would go--inns & taverns, armorers, money changers & banks,
gemners & jewelers, city buildings, guilds, etc. That was
expanded to two, then four map sheets, with the thieves' quarter
and Rob's Green Dragon Inn shown."

Q: "After you left TSR, you finished the Gord the Rogue
books. At the end of the cycle, Oerth bites the bullet. Was this
your way of saying that Greyhawk is dead and that fans should turn
away from TSR's version with disdain?" Gygax: "More my way of
saying that since T$R had killed the setting with trash releases,
it was time to wipe out the shame by obliterating the
setting."

Gygax: "I have laid out a new schematic of castle and
dungeon levels based on both my original design of 13 levels plus
side adjuncts, and the 'New Greyhawk Castle' that resulted when Rob
and I combined our efforts and added a lot of new levels too. From
that Rob will draft the level plans for the newest version of the
work. Meantime, I am collecting all the most salient feature,
encounters, tricks, traps, etc. for inclusion on the various
levels. So the end result will be what is essentially the best of
our old work in a coherent presentation usable by all DMs, the
material having all the known and yet to be discussed features of
the original work that are outstanding... I hope."

Gygax: "The whole of the combined material Rob and I put
together would be far too large for publication, 50 levels or so.
What I have done is gone back to my original design of more modest
scope, because I doubt the work will need to accommodate groups of
20 PCs delving on a daily basis."

Gygax: "...the original upper and lower parts of Castle
Greyhawk changed many times over the years they were in active use.
What we will do is to take the best of the lot and put that into a
detailed format usable by anyone."

Gygax: "I did indeed create details for the PC party on the
spot, adding whatever seemed appropriate, and as Rob played and
learned from me, he did the same, and when we were actively
co-DMing we could often create some really exciting material on the
spot, if you will."

Gygax: "As Rob learned from me, he too DMed by the
proverbial seat of the pants method. A single line of notes for an
encounter was sufficient for either of us to detail a lengthy
description, action, dialog, tricks or traps, and all the
rest."

Gygax: "What our challenge is going to be is to cull the
extraneous, take the best, and re-create the details we made up on
the spot. Of course the most famous things will be there, along
with most of the best parts that are not well-known through story
and word of mouth. "

Gygax: "Yggsburgh was a pain in the rump to write because I
wanted to include as much detail as possible for the GM interested
in using it as a campaign base. So there are sections on history,
costume, monetray system and economy of the area, and complete
descriptions of the town, its main locations, and the outstanding
geographical areas all with encounters or suggestions for
same."

Gygax: "the problem is that I tire out after about an
hour."

Gygax: "Rob has finished his add on module, but i have not
been up to doing the work needed to create the upper works of the
castle proper, let alone the dungeon levels below them When my
oldest friend died in late November, it was quite a setback for me.
Anyway, I am feeling a good deal better if late, and I will attempt
real creative work as soon as I feel up to it--likely
March."